Jeremy's Dad Joe died Monday morning at his group home near Seattle.
Here we are at his place in Shoreline, WA July 2019 before our return to Mongolia.
We are so glad to be back in America so that we can attend his burial services in Walla Walla, WA on November 7th, 2020.
Lova ya Dad, Grandpa, "Dr. B", JDB
Dad was born in Walla Walla, Washington the firstborn son of Damase and Margaret Bergevin on July 4th, 1936. His older sister Elaine was born two years before and brother Tom born six years later. Their youngest sister, our Aunt Tricia, was born two years after that.
Dad called his mother, our grandma, ‘Maggie’. He loved her so much. Recently when we talked about her over the phone he declared with feeling: “God, I miss her!”
Dad, who almost always referred to his own dad simply as ‘Damase’, was destined to become a child-prodigy rodeo cowboy. At age 9 at the fairgrounds at Walla Walla, he roped and tied a calf from his pony as an exhibition during a performance in the rodeo. In his early teens he was competing at and winning some local Amateur rodeos. When he won the calf roping at the PRCA’s prestigious Pendleton Round up in 1956, he was just 20 years old.
But Dad was more than a rodeo cowboy. Brought up around the farm and horse world, Dad didn’t let the rural world, rodeo or cowboy life define him.
Dad loved school. He attended his first 8 grades at the Frenchtown Schoolhouse in Lowden, WA. It was close enough to the farm to ride his horse to school. His educational career continued at WA-HI, and Washington State University, where he studied veterinary medicine.
In the summers, he continued to compete in rodeos. In September of 1959 he won the Pendleton Roundup again, this time in steer roping. That year’s winnings were enough to qualify him for the National Finals Steer Roping in Clayton, New Mexico. He remembered later: “There wasn’t much money, Mom and dad were the whole money. They would take my horse there, and I’d show up on the airplane! How can you beat that for being a spoiled youngster? But I was in school. It worked out good.”
In 1960, Dr. J.D. Bergevin DVM graduated at the top of his class from the Washington State University Veterinary College. He accepted internships in California and worked there two years. Before leaving, he married our mom Susan A. Rainwater at Holy Family Catholic Church in Kirkland, WA. Jim and Jesse were born in California. Jon, Joe, Jake and Jeremy were born in or near Kirkland, where we were raised in Silver Spurs, near Bridle Trails State Park.
Dad ran his vet business out of the barn behind our house there for the first 15 years. Like farming, it was a family business.
After that he lived near his vet clinic in Woodinville, and then in Bellevue near a 40-stall hunter-jumper training stable he ran simultaneously with his second wife.
Dad worked hard. He set us all a strong example. He announced with satisfaction in his retirement years: “All my sons are working!” He believed in work. Enigmatically he also lived the principal: “Do what you love, and you never work a day in your life.”
Healing horses was his purpose in life. He loved his practice. We all learned a lot going on calls with Dad, ‘circling the county’. Working for ‘wins’ gave meaning to his life and to others. Helping a horse or a human find a job, or better place in life, was more exciting to him than his own rodeo or career accolades. Dad pioneered Arthroscopic Surgery in equine knees and ankles in the Seattle area with UW Huskies’ Football Team Orthopedic surgeon. His innovation was featured on local television. One day a friend called me to say: “Your dad’s on TV!”
One of my favorite memories with Dad was roping in PRCA rodeos together that summer I was 12 years old. He roped and turned all five of our steers. How many kids get to compete with their dad against professional athletes? We even won money in one.
That same summer I spent about 8 weeks in Walla Walla team roping with Uncle Tom and cousin Marcelle. I won my first buckle at the Posse Grounds on a horse Dad bought for me.
Dad also liked to fly fish. Around 1980 he took a bunch of us boys up to the Blue Mountains to fish the Looking Glass Creek. We camped in and around the horse trailer.
One day in 2018 I called Dad from beside the Clearwater River in Montana. I was speaking in churches and staying at the pastor’s home. I asked Dad if he ever thought about heaven, and if he knew the way home there. I asked if he knew that the Word of God says we’re all sinners. “Can you say you are a sinner?” “Yes!”, he said. “Do you know the solution for that sin, that can save us?” ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘The blood of Christ’, I said. “That takes me back to when I was six years old,’ he said. Dad believed in Christ with the faith of a child.
I remember Dad took us to church regularly in the years following the divorce. Once while sitting beside him on a pew in the back, the thought of his mortality gripped me. I was probably 6 years old. I couldn’t imagine what life would be like without Dad. Even now that melancholy memory mingles with another from my early teens. I detected the aroma of his cologne on my hand. I traced it to the leather handle of his briefcase I had carried into his house. I guess it reminded me that this life is temporary, like a vapor.
In 2019, Dad was having some health crises and making frequent trips to the hospital. During one, he seemed to be disoriented and slipping away. His two main concerns seemed to be getting my kids mounted on a horse and getting his kids together around a table for a meal.
We were never sure when Dad might be leaving earth. I’m grateful we got much more time to talk about the good times and hear still new stories about his early days. On May 2nd, 2019, the National Day of Prayer, I visited Dad at his home in Northgate, Seattle. I shared with him the gospel of Christ that decades earlier changed my life. While explaining the part about admitting we need forgiveness of sin to enter heaven, Dad volunteered to say: “I better do that!” He understood and affirmed his childhood faith in Jesus as Savior in prayer that day.
That gospel message begins with the Words of Jesus in John 3:16: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that whoever believes in him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.” The rest of that gospel is in this yellow booklet and online at knowgod.com.
In the words of a favorite country hymn: “Will the circle be unbroken? …There’s a better, home a waiting, in the sky Lord in the sky.”
Here is a picture of heaven from Revelation: “Now I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse. And He who sat on him was called Faithful and True”. ‘He will wipe every tear, and there will be no more death’. Welcome home Dad. May God give you eternal rest from your work. May we all meet again in the great roundup in heaven at the feast of the Lamb of God.
May God grant all of us the victory of faith in Christ over death. As scripture says: “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin...But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Cor 15:55-57)
When in the hearing of a long-winded discourse Dad used to loudly inquire: “What’s the bottom line?” The answer is the last sentence of scripture, the final Word from God, on the Bible’s very last page: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you all. Amen.”
